CR's Take
		As chips go, this new product is enjoyable and more nutritious than regular potato or corn chips. But for health's sake, you're better off with a serving of unprocessed vegetables or fruit.

Price we paid: $2.99 for a 6-ounce bag (a bit more costly than a 5.5-ounce bag of Baked Lays Potato Chips at $2.19).

Frito-Lay's newest line of snacks, called Flat Earth, has big ambitions. The baked fruit and veggie crisps promise not only great taste but also a half-serving of real fruit or vegetables in every ounce. We sampled all six flavors of the crisps--three fruit, three veggie--then checked their nutrition labels to see how they stacked up to their real fruit and vegetable counterparts.

Taste. All the fruit crisps were sweet and tasted at least somewhat like their namesake fruits--though the sweetest of the three, Apple Cinnamon Grove, tasted more of cinnamon than apple. Two of the three (Apple Cinnamon and Wild Berry Patch) reminded our testers a bit of fruity breakfast cereals, which might make them appealing to kids.

The vegetable crisps were salty, relatively mild, and a bit reminiscent of traditional flavored corn chips (think Doritos). Tangy Tomato Ranch crisps tasted like cooked tomato. All six varieties of the crisps had a pleasant crunch.

Nutrition. Like most produce-themed chips, these are no substitute for the real thing. While all the Flat Earth crisps provide a decent dose of vitamin C, and the vegetable crisps provide vitamin A (see table), they have significantly more fat and calories per ounce, and in the case of the veggie crisps, a lot more sodium than their vegetable counterparts. They're also generally lower in fiber and have less of vitamins A and C. That's in part because the processing and heat required to turn fruits and vegetables into chips likely destroys many of their healthful phytochemicals, including the antioxidants (though baking destroys fewer phytochemicals than frying). Call it the veggie-chip curse.

What about the claim that every ounce contains a half-serving of fruits or vegetables? A spokesman for Frito-Lay said that each 1-ounce serving contains one-half a USDA recommended serving of the relevant fruits and vegetables that are then chopped up and dried. (One serving equals one medium apple or tomato or a half-cup of sliced fruits or vegetables.)

On the plus side, these crisps are definitely better for you than traditional fried potato or corn chips, and also more healthful than most other veggie chips we've looked at, which are typically fried and contain few or no vitamins. They also have less sodium than some other vegetable chips. And even the sweet flavors are relatively low in sugar.